A basketball drama about the 1978 US-Soviet Olympic clash unexpectedly topped the charts in Russia, earning over R2.8 million at the box office. Some 11.5 million lined up to see the film, Going Vertical (“Движение Вверх”).
The actual 1978 gold medal game in Munich ended in disarray, as refereeing mistakes led to multiple replays of the last three seconds of the game. Finally, the Soviet team scored when Belarusian player Ivan Edeshko heaved a full-court pass and teammate Alexander Belov scored. The US team protested, and their silver medals are unclaimed to this day.
The movie celebrates the Soviet team as victorious underdogs who achieve the impossible. Going Vertical has become a true fan favorite, with Russians crying and applauding as the credits roll. In fact, it is now the highest-grossing Russian film in post-Soviet history. The only movie that earned more in Russia? The international blockbuster Avatar.
In January, Russian pianist Daniil Trifonov won a Grammy award for Best Classical Instrumental Solo, for his album Transcendental. It was his fourth nomination for the top music honor.
Born in 1991 in Nizhny Novgorod, Trifonov has a long list of accomplishments: in 2016 he was Gramophone’s Artist of the Year. Britain’s The Sunday Times has called him “the most astounding young pianist of our age.”
Trifonov studied at Moscow’s Gnesin School of Music and currently lives mostly in New York.
A scandal rocked the art world when a Belgian state museum exhibited works of art it said were unknown masterpieces of the avant garde, including works by artists such as Kazimir Malevich and Vladimir Tatlin.
Ghent’s Museum of Fine Arts had been loaned the works by Russian-Belgian collector Igor Toporovsky, and as soon as photographs of the paintings were posted on social networks, the Russian art community protested, saying the works were fakes.
Twenty-four works of art were eventually removed from the exhibit to undergo rigorous assessments after a sensation-causing open letter by art experts called them “highly questionable.”
“To make an exhibit with questionable works is just shameful,” one of Russia’s top avant garde experts, Andrei Sarabyanov, told Agence France Presse, lamenting that the reputed museum did not consult any art historians before opening its exhibit.
Russia will vote for president on March 18, and that means that Russian expats all over the world will be welcome to turn up at their nearest Russian embassy to cast a ballot.
As a result, the Russian embassy in North Korea will open its doors for the sole Russian citizen permanently residing in the country, Vladimir Lee.
The embassy shared Lee’s story recently on its Facebook page: his North Korean father met his Soviet mother in Kamchatka, and the two fell in love and then moved back to his father’s country. Eventually, Vladimir’s children went to Russia to study, but he still lives in North Korea, keeping in regular touch with Russian diplomats at the embassy.
Russia’s embattled World Cup stadiums may be in danger from a new risk: locusts. An agricultural official recently warned that locusts, which have plagued parts of the country, especially the South, might cause the country major embarrassment if they find the green pitches of the new football stadiums attractive.
“The whole world will come visit us, football fields are green, and locusts love places with lots of green,” said Pyotr Chekmaryov, a department head at the agriculture ministry in charge of plant protection. “How embarrassing would that be!” he said, cautioning that some one million hectares in Russia are currently infested with the insect.
Russia’s Reserve Fund, a rainy day fund created back in 2008, has officially run dry and has been closed by the government. The Reserve Fund’s final R54 billion rubles were spent at the end of last year, after the government used them to cover its budget deficit.
Russia still has a second, similar fund, the National Wealth Fund, which is also used to cover the budget deficit (R622 billion in 2017), but the NWF was originally created to fund pensions. As of early February 2018, the NWF had over $66 billion, according to the Finance Ministry.
After a lengthy government sponsored health campaign, Russians are beginning to drink and smoke less, according to official figures.
Health Minister Veronika Skvortsova boasted that alcohol consumption in Russia has declined by 80 percent over the past five to seven years, while smoking fell by 22 percent. World Health Organization figures confirmed the government data, indicating that Russians now drink less alcohol per capita than either France or Germany, while tobacco use fell 20 percent between 2009 and 2016, with just 30 percent of Russians still smoking.
Measures to fight bad habits included tougher smoking restrictions, a ban on tobacco advertisements, and halting sales of alcohol after 11 pm.
A series of knife attacks in Russian schools has people scratching their heads, while President Vladimir Putin, for his part, is blaming America.
This winter several schools became crime scenes, with teenagers attacking their peers: in Perm, two pupils injured their teacher and several younger students; in Ulan-Ude, another teenager wielded an axe and a Molotov cocktail in a classroom, injuring seven; in Kaluga Oblast, a seventh grader struck another child with a knife before jumping out of a window; in Kemerovo, a girl was hospitalized after being stabbed by a classmate.
“They spend time on the internet,” said Putin, “watch what happened in the US, and then crimes are committed in schools, for no reason, only because they watched these things online.”
у людей, как говорится, «сносит крышу»
“People are selling their belongings to get rich quick buying cryptocurrencies. On TV they are showing bitcoin’s uncontrolled growth in relation to the dollar, and people, as they say, ‘are going nuts.’ Then suddenly bitcoin crashes and people realize that they haven’t gained anything and have lost everything they had.”
Это успешная корпорация, действующая по известным законам.
“The city has a strong lobbying group that knows how to put up monuments and likes to do so. This is a successful bunch that operates in accordance with well-known rules. For example, what is the secret behind the prevalence of iPhones? Good marketing. Same thing here.”
пока еще не созрел конкурент Путину, даже близко
“We see many capable people, but we don’t see any competitors. In my opinion, no Putin rivals have ripened yet. Not even close.”
Ну есть и есть, будем под дождем работать.
“People have to think of sanctions the same way they think of rain. Do you know how we think of rain? It is what it is; we will work in the rain.”
Крутился в бюрократическом хороводе...
“I too often picked the easy path. I danced the bureaucratic dance, I got some gifts and gave some gifts. I was a hypocrite. Only when you’re on the other side do you understand what difficult lives people have. And when you are doing well, you just turn away. Forgive me, people.”
социально ответственные, которые заботятся о стране
“We don’t think we have oligarchs. Today we have competent businessmen, who are socially responsible, who care about the country, and who make money through responsible business.”
“То, что происходит вокруг фильма «Смерть Сталина», — это не шутки. Надо заставить всех посмотреть эту гадость. Когда Сталин лежит в луже мочи, а вокруг него уроды, которые делят власть. И ни одного положительного героя, на ком можно было бы остановить глаз. И народ — урод, и страна — урод, и руководители его — тоже уроды.”
“What is happening regarding the film The Death of Stalin is no laughing matter. Everyone should be forced to watch this filth. Where Stalin is lying in a pool of urine and he is surrounded by dreadful people divvying up power. There’s not a positive hero in sight. The people are dreadful, the country is dreadful, and its leaders are also dreadful.”
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